/ best free open source web resources /

The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources. All components in the YUI Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses. YUI version 2.3.0 has just released on July 31, 2007 with six new additions to the library as well as a new skinning architecture and a new visual treatment for most of our UI controls. The new features include Rich Text Editor, Base CSS, YUILoader Utility, ImageLoader Utility, Color Picker Control, YUI Test Utility.

Timeplot is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for plotting time series and overlay time-based events over them (with the same data formats that Timeline supports). Just like Timeline or Google Maps, Timeplot can be used with zero software installation, server-side or client-side. You can populate Timeplot with data by pointing it to an space or comma separated file. Timeplot also supports Timeline’s XML format, meaning that you can reuse the same data file of your Timeline and overlay them over a time series plot. It looks so specialized and works smoothly. It is a very great charts tool to represent complex data.

Dojo is an Open Source DHTML toolkit written in JavaScript. Dojo allows you to easily build dynamic capabilities into web pages and any other environment that supports JavaScript sanely. With Dojo you can build degradable user interfaces more easily, prototype interactive widgets quickly, and animate transitions. Dojo’s event system, I/O APIs, and generic language enhancement form the basis of a powerful programming environment. When you write scripts with Dojo, you can include as little or as much of the available APIs as you need to suit your needs.

Ajax im is a browser-based instant messaging client that you can use it freely on your website projects or web applications. It uses the XMLHTTPRequest object in JavaScript to send and receive commands to and from the server. No refreshing of the page is ever needed for this “web application” to work, as everything is updated in real-time via JavaScript. It is very easy to install and the user interface is so elegant.

Solutoire took part of PlotKit and wrote some parts himself, then made Plotr which does not need the Mochikit library to work with. It is also a lightweight charting framework with only 12kb. There are more than 30 options for you to customize the chart. Like PlotKit, you can display Pie Charts, Line Charts and Bar/Column Charts.

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. Due to the concern about internet security, building web application which store and serve sensitive information locally on users’ own computers are very useful.

Store and serve application resources locally

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

It is a similar idea with Apollo which enable offline use of web applications. From now on, users can store data locally in their database on their own computer. So that some users can use the web application they like, at the same time prevent their sensitive information being hacked by storing their information locally.